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Another brilliant Redneck beekeeping idea....

So after a season of hard beekeeping I am ready to quit,,,,,again. But must push through and get the mites knocked down ect ect. I was trying to decide what to use, and it looks like those crazy Canadians are having good luck with OA vaporization. The problem for guys with many hives is time and ease of treatment.
say 600 hives times 60sec treatment plus a minute or two of set up per hive, plus multiple treatments plus multiple trips to out yards = too much time!!!

My question is .....has anyone played with a suspension of OA in FGMO ran through a fogger? I know OA will not disolve in FGMO but I wonder if a suspension would work? How much OA are we using per hive?
Thanks

Re: Another brilliant Redneck beekeeping idea....

Originally Posted by simplyhoney

My question is .....has anyone played with a suspension of OA in FGMO ran through a fogger? I know OA will not disolve in FGMO but I wonder if a suspension would work? How much OA are we using per hive?
Thanks

Re: Another brilliant Redneck beekeeping idea....

Re: Another brilliant Redneck beekeeping idea....

Not a new idea. For years i have collected info from around the world about varroa and other pests. So i found this in one of my files, but have no idea where it came from. Never tried this so cannot say if its any good.But here it is:

"Here are the concentrations and comments from the notes on using OA in a burgess fogger.

--start note---

7.5gm oxalic acid crystals
100 ml warm water.

Use warm water, and stir or agitate until crystals are completely disolved.
Solution must be used within 2 weeks.

Paul had noted the following from his experimentation:

1. It was tough to dissolve the crystals in water. Hot water certainly helped but that is often not readily available in the field.

2. We had no way of measuring the amount applied to the colony. By placing the nozzle at the hive entrance, we applied repeated bursts of fog until it appeared at top of the bars of the top super (the lid was removed of course). While it appeared to have done something to the mites since the colonies survived the winter well, I am a bit leery about this method because of the unknown quantity of acid being applied.

--- end note

When I experimented with this method, I had very little problem with disolving the oxalic acid in warm (tap warm) water. The Oxalic acid I used was "rainbow brand - Pure Oxalic Acid" which I bought at a local hardware store.

I applied the fog the same as paul, through the bottom entrance to the hive, and I left the inner cover on. I gave 4-5 good bursts into the bottom entrance and stopped when I observed the fog being vented through the center opening in the inner cover.

-Todd
--------------------------

posted April 20, 2005 08:22 PM I experimented a bit about a year ago with applying Oxalic acid via a fogger. The procedure I used was copied exactly from a post I came across from a Mr. Paul van Westendorp who is a Provincial Apiculturist in British Columbia. I Actually phoned Paul and had a wonderful, and informative conversation with him about how he had utilized the fogger with OA. Paul was kind enough to send me his field notes with ratios, concentrations and mixing instructions. The procedure basically entailed dissolving a portion of oxalic acid into plain water and then using this solution directly in the fogger. With my limited testing of the process I will say I found the process to work wonderfully well. The fogger produced a nice fog. I have a plain old burgess propane fogger (metal coil and I think an aluminum tip) - I didnt have any trouble with the OA corroding the fogger, however I did only a limited amount of Oxalic fogging and ran some plain water through the fogger about a week after running the OA solution through it. I still regularly use the fogger with FGMO. I unfortunately gave my copy of the notes I got from Paul to another local beekeeper friend who was going to continue to experiment with the process. If anyone is actually interested, I could try and retrieve them from him and send you a copy. I do recall that Paul advised that the OA/Water solution should be used within 3-4 days as he felt it would destabilize. His advice was to mix up the OA/Water solution and use it immediately, which is what I did both times I experimented with the process.

Does anyone have any further input, ideas or "watch out for's" in this process? It was very easy when compared with trying to heat the OA in my copper pipe based vaporizer!